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British Village Requests Removal From GPS Maps
longacre writes "The tiny village of Barrow Gurney, England, has asked GPS map publisher Tele Atlas to remove them from the company's maps. The reason: truck drivers using GPS navigation devices are being directed to drive through the town despite the roads being too narrow for sidewalks, which has led to numerous accidents. At the root of the problem lies the fact that the navigation maps used by trucks are the same as those used by passenger cars, and they don't contain data on road width or no-truck zones. Tele Atlas says they will release truck-appropriate databases at some point, but until then they advise local governments to make use of a technology dating back to the Romans: road signs."
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These aren't the roads you're looking for.
"Time is nothing; timing is everything."
Cut him some slack, he probably just had some Decepticon ass to kick.
Sounds like a great opportunity for the law enforcement officers of Barrow Gurney to make some money issuing fines.
They will take notice of a sign that says "Maximum clearance" though. :)
I like muppets.
http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=436983
I would expect idiots to ignore them, because the computer voice must be obeyed.
I could see truckers ignoring them, especially if a GPS or map is advising them to take a different route. At least some of them are going to assume that the sign is wrong. Adding that feature to the software should be a priority.
"Maybe this world is another planet's hell"
Aldous Huxley
bumbles bounce!
Big, giant speed bumps. Doesn't generate much revenue, but it will send a very effective message.
What?
Put up road signs. Next, enforce the laws with lengthy traffic stops for trucks and strict fines. If one causes an accident anyway, feel free to throw them in jail pending local laws and the installation of signs detailing the laws.
Do what we did on Long Island's parkways. (I used to live there.) Put low bridges over the roads. Make it physically impossible for trucks to pass, and they won't follow. Granted, a few trucks a year try to use the parkways anyway, but most learn quickly that it's a terrible, terrible idea.
Not often enough, though. There's a bridge near here that's got an impressive collection of scrapes and dents from truckers taking the tops off their vehicles.
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
http://www.jhnews.com/article.php?art_id=2473/
JM
Oink, Oink!!
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article2788651.ece - Lorry stuck for 3 days due to sat nav route
...for local people.
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
I think the town might just have to get its name legally changed.
Coming up on your right... nothing.
...basically, by misdirecting trucks via GPS, the machines now have a way to kill us.
If your theory is different from practice, then your theory is wrong.
I think in jolly ole England those Maximum Clearance" sign are marked "Max. Headroom". How many times have truck drivers, in England they are called lorry drivers, ignore all of those signs. Here are some image of what happens if someone ignores those signs: http://www.dhsdiecast.com/content/gallery/index.cfm?gallery_photo_id=3770 http://www.dhsdiecast.com/content/gallery/index.cfm?gallery_photo_id=228 There are many others you can search the internet for. I know there are many other villages in Europe that are in the similar condition in which the roads are too narrow for anything except a Morris Mini or smaller.
they will need to find another solution. such as a no trucks sign and a cop with a bad attitude to hand out the tickets.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
1. Post sign at entrance to turn off that says "trucks over X lbs subject to 500 fine"
2. Station police officer 100 yards past sign.
3. Profit!
The cake is a pie
That is brilliant! They just need to make sure that it is outside of town where no innocent bystanders will get hurt when the occasional accident happens. Heck, they could set up video cameras, and if the trucks keep coming, they can sell the footage to one of those 'real car wreck' programs. If they have the road posted as no trucks ahead of the 'bridge', they even get to fine the driver when they crash.
Barrow Gurney, instead of trying to do away with this new source of traffic, adapt! Enjoy the opportunity of having all these truck divers going through your locality to develop your economy and move on to the next level!
Everyone knows a truck driver craves fornication with women. Have whores! Put some money into turning an old farm in dereliction into a brothel and import truckloads of east European prostitutes! Then build your economy around this, build hotels, fast-food restaurants, gynaecology clinics, and soon enough you'll be the city every European truck driver wants to stop in!
You just got troll'd!
The request is totally unreasonable, information is not easily contained. A lot of roads are designated for non-truck use, if trucks don't obey signs, ticket the trucks, drivers, and companies they belong to. There's no need to create new laws and rules for such a simple thing.
I did, but not all the drivers. I know a guy that was specifically warned about a low clearance on his route, and the short bypass around it. He still topped his cab and trailer.
Any sufficiently advanced influence is indistinguishable from control.
As I read the link, it says: "You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near 'LIMIT 18446744073709551615' at line 1". Well, I guess anybody is lucky to be alive after an SQL syntax error...
This being slashdot, I'm expecting lots of people to post either agreeing that a few road signs are all that's needed, or some sort of opposite position, like hide the signs behind bushes and then ticket the hell out of the truckers.
The real problem is, for every trucker that actually is clueless and 'innocently' relies totally on the GPS info, there's another one who has heard the road is too narrow and difficult for trucks, but will try it anyway, and then claim he never heard any other driver say differently. The ones that will lie like hell about having foreknowledge are also the ones who will claim they made the decision to go that way based only on GPS info, and they assumed the GPS wouldn't mislead them. They may well claim that their dispatcher didn't say anything either, to shield their firm from potential liability, and try to make it look like the gadjet is the real source of the whole problem.
Now what happens if the truck didn't just clip a historic building or two (Which are pence a dozen in the UK), but, e.g., ran over a kid?
This is really about the difference in UK and US law. In the US, there are plenty of precedents that let the child's parents sue the trucker's firm, the GPS maker, or whomever has the deepest pockets. In the UK, there's much less ability to extend liability to someone only peripherally involved. A tangled mess of a case, with lots of arguments about just who is responsible for what percentage of total damages, tends to result in much more modest settlements there. One thing both locations share is that all too often average people tend to assume a computer based system doesn't make mistakes.
This means the town may be playing it smart - take away the GPS info, and the driver has to justify his decision based on paper maps, talking with the corporate dispatcher, or some other source of info, and if that's not a computer, the driver can't weasel out of much by claiming he assumed the source of info was infallible.
Who is John Cabal?
Trucks have gotten really bad up here in around Vancouver, Canada. Especially late at night. They pay no attention to street lights, they simply blow their horn and if your lucky you get out of the way. My father wasn't so lucky a few years back. The driver didn't even deny that he ran the red, just said he didn't see my dad. Actually my father was lucky as he wasn't seriously hurt, although that was the end of that van. Everyone I know has a story about how "they almost got killed by a big truck".
Seriously, who are you? Wikipedia?
- Draft a local ordinance with a big fine for driving an oversized vehicle on a road where they are prohibittied.
- Prohibit oversized vehicles on said road.
- Profit
There are small towns that exist only to serve as speed traps on highways. They incorporate near a highway and lower the speed limit to 25 mph. The only service the town provides is a police force. The only thing the police force does is write speeding tickets. Their only sounce for income is from these speeding tickets. This income is only spent providing huge salaries to the police force.I can see truck traps being intentionally created. Find a back road that a sat nav sends trucks down. Incorporate there, narrow the road, start fining trucks.
Its fairly near to me and I agree with the residents...
It is a death trap and its not just lorries, its tourists who are getting from the west country to bristol. Its a great shortcut between two major roads, but it was not designed for the amount of traffic that gps sends through. They have seen MAJOR increases in traffic since gps became popular.
The roads are built like they are for horse and cart. They wind up and down and they are very narrow with no pavement, people do die there.
Big trucks have some horrendous blind spots, even with all the mirrors. We're (past tense now) taught to clear the lane first. But, in city traffic, things like that and following distance go out the window because everyone is in a contest to see who can be the biggest asshole. And, there is always things like road hypnosis and plain old not paying attention.
Sometimes the "No Trucks" signs get ignored because the delivery location only accessable from that route. But, yeah, I've seen plenty of drivers ignore "No Trucks" signs either because they can't turn around, don't know the road, or are just impatient. I obeyed the signs except in the first condition. The most memerable one I encountered was when a driver hauling doubles wiped out a bunch of utility lines and poles trying to drive down a little country road.
But, keep in mind, just like there are bad drivers in cars, their are bad drivers in trucks. Most know how to handle themselves, even if they sometimes have to get a little pushy, but not all.
Any sufficiently advanced influence is indistinguishable from control.
In my experience the drivers of the big 40' trucks tend to be the most capable and courteous drivers on the road. They have a great view of the road ahead, however they have a limited view of what's behind or alongside them. It's always a good idea to bear this in mind and keep clear. Truck drivers will do their best to avoid difficult roads, and are acutely aware that their continued employment depends on their obeying the rules. The residents of the village would be best off campaigning for that bypass to built so that they can ban trucks entirely.
Why arent' the roads big enough for sidewalks? I bet they could put in sidewalks if they wanted to (to avoid accidents), but they'd rather keep the excuse to keep out trucks.
If you open your mind too wide, people will throw trash in it.
This article's timing is very interesting given all the talk about 'superlorries' in the uk press this week. The 'superlorry' is a 60-tonne vehicles, that will fit 60% more goods than the current big trucks in the UK. The government is considering allowing them in the UK, and according to BBC this morning they are currently on test at some small airport. The haulage companies say if approved they will only operate on motorways, but groups are already concerted about these trucks going through small towns, much like this story. Here is an article from the Times: http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/transport/article2943573.ece
Please learn to read maps. It's really not that hard.
I don't know how many people I've given perfect directions to, only to have them throw them out to trust their super duper GPS unit and end up on the other side of town.
What's really annoying is they sit there and let me give them directions, knowing full well they will ignore them.
Stupid bastards.
expandfairuse.org
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
I'd recommend they also purchase a crane and a bulldozer if they do that.
Any sufficiently advanced influence is indistinguishable from control.
God no, they couldn't do that. Not with the way the papers talk about it.
Any time a person in this country gets a ticket for speeding or just about any other driving offence, it's the police trying to make a profit from the humble working man and is a terrible injustice.
Of course, they also constantly describe the police as underfunded whenever something happens and they fail to respond...
Additional signs aren't required - driving inappropriately close to other vehicles or pedestrians, which these truck drivers must be doing, is driving without due care and attention and comes with 3-9 penalty points so a truck driver who cops a couple of these is going to find himself cleaning trucks rather than driving them. Claiming there were no signs warning of narrow roads is likely to solicit a response of "are you registered blind" from any judge and the response to "satnav made me do it" doesn't bear thinking about. Thinking you can leg it off back to the other side of the channel isn't always going to work now as there are reciprocal arrangements with some countries.
Local councils have very close ties with the local constabulary so it's easy for them to request a clampdown.
Make a bypass! Problem solved!
What? There's a house in the way? You say it's owned by Arthur Dent?
I'll get the byzantine paper trail started, go tell Prosser to fire up the bulldozer.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
sounds like a problem in need of a solution.
To me, it sounds like a rare instance of authorities caring more about safety than money. Unfortunately, your attitude seems to be more common - to the point that some communities (*cough*Union City, CA*cough) have been caught deliberately and illegally causing unsafe situations in order to increase revenue from traffic violations.
US truck routing programs like PC*Miler and IntelliRoute DO know about truck restrictions. Which means that on the Main Line in Pennsylvania, which has many train bridges less than 13" 6' above the roadway (one has under 9 feet clearance!), it's usually rental trucks which hit them rather than the big commercial ones...
why does everything have to be harder to do in Windows?
Because you are an idiot and idiots have to deal with user error.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I support this if they rename the town to Ninjaville.
What the hell is a no truck road? I live in Oregon and I swear I have never in my life seen a no truck road. I think in a situation like this it's time to build another road.
Under the influence of Post-Cyberpunk Gonzo Journalism
Don't taze me, good buddy! 10-4
Good. Cheap. Fast. Pick Two.
Now if only the money generated from problem 1 was used to address issues of problem 2, instead of going to the politicians' golf & booze "operational expenses", then both problems would correct themselves.
Just put up a sign saying "Toll Road for Trucks: XX $" and watch how truckers do a quick reverse and disappear forever.
How the heck you you expect the police to fill their tase quota without picking off a trucker or two? Sheesh people these days.
"I don't necessarily agree with everything I say." - Marshall McLuhan
I wholeheartedly sympathize with the residents of Barrow Gurney, because ever since the introduction of sat nav we've seen a large increase in the number of delivery lorries (mostly from builders yards) going past our house, and half the time scraping or banging into the drystone wall attached to our house because the road is so narrow. We've asked them why they travel down past our house instead of coming from the other end of our road to get where they were going, their answer almost every time: sat nav
The worst incedent happend whilst we were on holiday, a 5 axle lorry went past and knocked down a large part of the wall not attached to our house without stopping, the driver didn't even realise what he'd done.
I wish I could remove our road from bloody truck driver sat nav maps, too.
To do something right, you often have to roll up your sleeves and get busy.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Here's what else can happen if you ignore those signs:
http://i134.photobucket.com/albums/q101/djpaultimberman/maxHeadroom2.jpg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWdgAMYjYSs
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
I bet they would start if that sign was posted on a 12' reinforced concrete truss spanning the road.
"I don't necessarily agree with everything I say." - Marshall McLuhan
It doesn't matter if you design the thing to block and be hit by a truck reasonably safely and not serve any other function.
At the entry roads to the village put up barriers that will block vehicles above a certain height. Most trucks are taller than normal vehicles that would fit.
Or set up a chicane designed to block vehicles which won't make it through the village.
Then put up a big traffic sign with red circle and a red slash across it with a symbol of a truck inside the circle - "No trucks". This is so you can justify the fines etc to drivers that ignore it and hit the barriers/chicane.
It's better to have the trucks stuck outside the village than inside the village - damage to stuff that's designed to take the damage, easier to clean up the mess, doesn't affect village as much, etc.
If you're lucky you might be able to place the barriers where it's much easier to tow the trucks away.
"Haha! Truckers don't look at Road Signs!
Hell, they don't even look before they change lanes. I had one force me over a lane just the other day. They're crazy if they think truckers will just turn around and go another way if the road says "no trucks"."
First, you were probably sitting in his blind spot. Trucks aren't exactly known for their view friendly dimensions. Remember, the rule is if you can't see their mirrors they can't see you. Most truckers seem to drive a whole lot better than the cell phone using, texting, make-up putting on, shaving, eating, or newspaper reading car drivers I see every day.
Second, I have to agree that many truck AND car drivers can't seem to read signs or ignore them even if they do read them. There's a train bridge in downtown Baltimore that seems to collect a or two truck weekly despite multiple signs giving the maximum clearance. I always found it amusing to see the damage to the trailer and then watch as they let the air out of all of the tires and then towed them out.
I reserve the right to think for myself. Others' opinions are optional. Puppy on lap = typos...not illiteracy.
GPS systems can be great for finding unfamiliar routes, but are only ever as smart as the driver.
My wife and I took a taxi from a friend's place in the outer suburbs of Melbourne to our place in the central city. The taxi driver put the address into the GPS and off we went. It was late, we were tired so we didn't pay too much attention until... I noticed a sign pointing to a satellite town.
As we argued with the driver where the city was (!) he confidently stopped at a small side street in the middle of nowhere and said that we'd arrived.
It took us another ninety minutes and several fare resets (plus arguments) to get back home because this bozo relied on the GPS completely at the expense of his own common sense.
I've got zero faith in drivers who rely on their GPS navigation because (as in our case) they disregard signs that clearly show where they should be going in favour of what the machine tells them.
The GPS navigation company should be forced to change their software to actually conform to the road rules because as it stands now, it has a serious design flaw.
Better to put up a sign "No Beer". If they think it's a dry county they won't go near the place.
Good ideas; I still hate your sig, though!
Stupidity is an equal opportunity striker.
Fellow slashdotter Bill Dog
They're crazy if they think truckers will just turn around and go another way if the road says "no trucks".
Of course they are! It should say "No Lorries" instead.
Still IMing in the stone age?
No, it's because you dared to post first. I did on a cellphone thread and got modded down substantially as "offtopic" and "flamebait".
So don't take it too seriously. I ended up getting a 1, Interesting as my final tally.
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
Don't be silly. We shoot and bludgeon our truckers here.
Don't be such a pansy.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
It isn't capitalised. An articulated lorry is exactly the same thing you would call a semi-trailer rig. A big-arsed steel thing with a stopping time of a fortnight and 18 wheels which really doesn't care whether you call it a truck or a lorry when some bastard pushes you in front of it. Funny thing is, most drivers call the tractor a truck when it's without its trailer. The mad sods even race the things. (WARNING: Flash video embedded right there in the front page)
Resistance is futile. Reactance buggers it up.
Here's what they need.This one which is cached by Google here is from one of our anonymous friends.
Concrete Bollards set in the roadway wide enough for a car to pass through but too close together for lorry / truck would be the lo-tech solution.
Don't wait for the Local Govt. to get its arse into gear. Just Do It. There you go! Problem solved!
I wonder about liability issues.
A guy I used to know owned a house that was on the outside of a curve in the road. A few times every year, someone driving too fast missed the curve and ended up in his front yard. He was afraid that one of them would end up in his living room sometime, so he looked into getting a reinforced cement wall built around his property on that side.
A lawyer advised him that since the obvious purpose of the wall would be to keep vehicles out of his yard, he could be sued by anyone who hit the wall, and ghawd-help-him if anyone was killed by hitting that wall.
He never did build it.
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
In TFA they note that many of the drivers are from other EU countries and speak little/no english, nor do they have local licenses.
This sig has not been evaluated by the FDA. It is not designed to diagnose, treat, prevent, or cure any disease.
I'm surprised that the that the village didn't sue, claiming that they own the village's name, coordinates and map information. Without permission from the village, map software shouldn't be able to use the information.
Seems like everyone else wants to have this level of control over their intellectual capital - so why can't the village.
Glad your father came out of the ordeal alright. I've met a few Canadian truckers. They tend to be rather unpleasant (unlike most of the other Canadians I've known over the years).
Some of the interstates (and a lot of cities, for that matter) here in the US aren't any better. I have far too many stories of almost being run off the road by long haul truckers that either aren't paying any attention to the road or are literally falling asleep at the wheel. It's crazy.
Then there was the night that I almost got run off the bridge over the Mississippi river while driving into St Louis by a crazy guy driving a FedEx truck. Must have been a *really* urgent package delivery.
Everything I need to know I learned by killing smart people and eating their brains.
Don't fine anyone. That's stupid. Not only is it stupid, but should be punishable by death. It's just another way for a run-amok government to illegally steal money from those who had to WORK to EARN it, thereby forcing them to rely on charity or worse yet government hand-outs. In fact, abolish all laws and agencies that enforce them while we're at it. Vigilante justice works best. Have some backwoods folks with shotguns standing around to enforce the no truck sign, problem solved.
Oh, there was the £ key, on the underside of my keyboard. Silly me. (bitches).
I'm in Ohio, which is a major truck shipping hub, and we have a lot of "No Truck" roads. They're generally declared that because of the width of the road, excessive curves, etc or because it goes through nothing but residential neighborhoods (which some truckers try to use as shortcuts and end up causing a number of accidents on).
Everything I need to know I learned by killing smart people and eating their brains.
Here's a few VERY basic facts that most people seem to forget to just simply don't care about.
First of all.. the trucker that "forced you over" is the minority. The EXTREME minority. My dad was a trucker, my uncle was a trucker, and I have several good friends who are still truckers. None of them were *ever* in an accident. With well over 100 combined years on the road, and countless hundreds of thousands of miles under the tires, I think that's a DAMN good driving record. Most people don't give truckers the respect they deserve. It takes a HELLUVA lot more to stop a fully loaded 18 wheeler than a car. It's also a lot harder to see cars that are along side of you or behind you in a rig.
My second point is very simple. If truckers stop, the entire country stops. If you eat it, wear it, drive it, or pretty much anything else, a trucker delivered it.
Think about that the next time you're going down the road and one of the hardest working men (or women) in the country, who takes WEEKS at a time away from their families and friends just to deliver the things that you and I use every single day.
You can close your eyes to reality but not to memories.
well I expected they've been removed long ago.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
To the countless posts already about adding signs and seriously expecting that will help: the article explicitly states that part of the problem are English-illiterate drivers who rely only on Sat/Nav out of necessity.
How about banning using Sat/Nav devices in all civilian and commercial vehicles (much like use of; but not possession of, radar detectors is illegal in some states). Then you can even further increase revenue!
At least that would put a log on the fire and encourage a quick resolution from the private sector.
</sarcasm> (I think).
Why not just build the wall a few feet from the house?
Both of these would need to be addressed for this town. Foreign truckers won't know where to go. Even if they did, they might be stuck since it doesn't sound like they have room to drive, let alone turn around.
for Village People.
Hell if they will. Haven't you ever seen anyone delivering a bridge? Car carriers are notorious for it.
There certainly could be many ways to safekeep your house without the dang lawyers being able to sue you for someone else's mistake.
..........FULL STOP.
You are probably the one who cut me off by taking my right of way when you entered thru traffic. But then people driving cars/pickups dont ever see motorcycles. Dumb and Dumber.
Moving into or out of the village would be a royal pain if they have moving vans the size of the ones in the States.
Hmm, not always... reminds me of a story. A truck driver underestimated the height of his trailer and promptly got stuck under a bridge. As a huge traffic jam swelled up behind, the truck driver and sheriff walked around the truck, rubbing their chins. The driver tried reversing, but got only tyre spin and fould smelling smoke. It was really stuck.
A motorist walked up and introduced himself as; "John Cooper, I helped design this bridge, maybe I can help".
Much walking around, chin rubbing and head scratching ensued, amidst the spiraling honking and abuse.
"I think we're going to have to bring in hydraulic lifts and raise the bridge slightly" Said John Cooper.
"Ungh, my boss ain't gonna like that" Said the truck driver.
Just then, a kid, riding by on his bike stopped, dismounted, took of his cap (this was before compulsory bicycle helmets), looked up and down and said...
"Why don't you let some air out of the tyres?"
Probably because he saw you cut off his buddy with four inches to spare, fuckwad.
Anyway, all they have to do is put up a tunnel with limited clearance on one of their own streets. Then let the truckers who get careless pay for repairs to the tunnel. Plus a hefty fine.
They are often roads that go through residential areas that are located next to industrial areas.
I heard that as a Bill Engvall routine.
Cop pulls up and asks "Ya get yer truck stuck?"
Trucker: "Nosir, I was delivering this overpass and I ran outta gas!"
if the answer isn't violence, neither is your silence / freedom of expression doesn't make it alright
Etak before they were bought by Teleatlas. There was a number of ways to downgrade a road so that the route choices avoided it. There were cases when our company sent mappers into urban areas where they felt there lives were in danger and we never really did anything about it. Problem was (in my opinion of course) that we had icons to establish an area was rich and didn't want random traffic but no icon to say the area was dangerous (from a mapping point of view the same icon would would have worked) and we were afraid of the appearance of racism or classism or whatever.
Around here, the surest way to make all trucks disappear is for the state police to setup a roadside weight and safety inspection checkpoint.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Haha! Truckers don't look at Road Signs! Hell, they don't even look before they change lanes. I had one force me over a lane just the other day.
They also have very large blind spots. It is best not to drive in them.
Well IF the van could actually make it into the relevant bits of the village, I'm sure you can design it so the steel barricade can be raised or opened.
:).
Otherwise, better not to let those huge vans in.
On a related note I wonder if modern sized tourists have got stuck in some of those old houses designed for much smaller people
Land mines.
If someone gets injured on your property, you'll get sued no matter how silly (burgular hurts himself breaking it, etc). If someone gets killed on your property, there's only *your* story as to what happened. Scary, but those are the incentives of the system.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
the cheapskate truckers are using GPS units they bought from Halfords etc. which are designed for cars... they aren't gonna shell out for a truck specific database, even if they knew they were available... and the vast majority of these stuck drivers are foreign, so even getting truck specific GPS units and databases onto the market in the UK won't help
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
I'd like to point out that the article about Union City is from 9/25/2005.
However, I live in Union City and have a pretty low opinion of our police department and some of our other services. In past dealings I have had with the police in Union City, they have not properly dealt with the situation.
"Why don't you let some air out of the tyres?"
Perhaps that will reduce the load capacity too much on the tires, since your truck probably needs to lose 2-3 inches.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Not saying the original poster is guilty of anything... but this reminds me of a story.
A while back I pointed to a car I was trailing and told my girlfriend (insert joke here) "that guys gonna get cut off. you watch". The truck was in the left lane when he should have in the right, so it was just a matter of time before he moved over. The car in the right lane had spent at least the last 5 miles in his blind spot for no reason whatsoever. Guess what? Mr. truck driver has no clue you are there. Since he hasn't seen anything in five minutes as far as he's concerned the lane is clear. Sure enough the semi signaled and immediately changed lanes, forcing the car onto the shoulder. Pretty scary. What followed was honking, finger salutes, racing up to the truck and general screaming idiocy. Yet it was totally the car's fault.
I'm always either behind a truck or blasting past it, unless traffic is very heavy, but in that case there's at least one car blocking a lane change thats not in the blind spot so I know I'm cool. If there isn't I'm braking to let the truck over or accelerating out of the blind spot, whether he's signaled a lane change or not.
I know! The British truck drivers are the worst! They are all driving on the wrong side of the road! /ducks
Interesting dilema.
One solution could be to petition the government to upgrade the highway through town or build a ring road.
Another, considerably less friendly option, is to install one helluva hairpin turn in the main road. Easy enough for a passenger vehicle to navigate at playground speed, but impossible for a transport truck.
Maybe the ideal solution is to install a toll booth system. If a vehicle exceeds a certain weight (or physical dimension), they'll need to pay at the initial toll booth. Then, install a series of toll booths along the route with a police radar of some fashion. If the vehicle exceeds the posted speed limit, they need to pay another toll in order to proceed to the next segment.
In short order, one of two things will happen. The traffic will find an alternate route around the town, or the town will have earned enough money to build their own ring road.
At the root of the problem lies the fact that ....
podunk towns build streets too narrow for trucks.
...or they could just fix the map data.
Of course they don't look before they change lanes. They don't have to, they know you'll get out of the way. They don't care, they have no reason to care. If they hit you, you die, they keep driving and maybe wonder what that little noise was.
More seriously though, my uncle was a trucker and you'd better believe they pay attention to signs. No professional trucker wants to get ticketed, ever. They operate on thin margins and the insurance hit alone would go a long way towards putting them out of business. They also respect signs for a more pragmatic reason, and one sign more than most: "Low bridge ahead". If you don't think truckers will turn around and find another road after seeing one of those signs, you're crazy.
Random and weird software I've written.
actually, bludgeoning the the British set piece, our pigs don't have guns or tasers, but we do give them extremely vicious steel truncheons instead of the wooden and plastic ones everyone else uses.
What if Tetris was invented by Nazis?
Union City is nothing new. In High School physics we had a project to time yellow lights in town along with speed limit and distance of the intersection, compared to deceleration (braking) of the average car.
I would say about half of the lights the class examined had a "no win zone" where it was impossible to either make it through the intersection (w/o speeding) or brake in time if the light turned yellow. This was in 1994.
I'm not sure if it's greed on the part of governments or just simple incompetence. Probably a bit of both.
Vote Libertarian
Out here in Cali, you've got more to worry about from the SUVs, rich sobs (oftentimes in said SUVs), and the occasional ditzy kids/streetracers/cops. I've personally seen very few squirrelly maneuvers from semis out here, and I've got about 15k of cross-country driving under my belt, in addition to another 30-40 in-Cali driving. With the exception of some of the quieter sections of 80 out of state, by far the biggest dangers driving tend to be personal trucks/suvs, followed by various ineptly driven passenger vehicles.
Just my 2 cents.
...or they could just fix the map data. Have you ever asked a software vendor to add a feature or fix a minor bug?Except of course that it isn't. A more accurate, if less mnemonic mnemonic, would be "A pint is a pound in the US and exactly nowhere else."
Outside of the states, we know that "A pint of pure water weighs a pound and a quarter." Because, you know, a proper pint is 20 fl oz. Not sure why you Americans have such funny little pints.
What is the robbing of a bank, compared to the founding of a bank? -- Bertolt Brecht
Except of course that it isn't. A more accurate, if less mnemonic mnemonic, would be "A pint is a pound in the US and exactly nowhere else."
Outside of the states, we know that "A pint of pure water weighs a pound and a quarter." Because, you know, a proper pint is 20 fl oz. Not sure why you Americans have such funny little pints.
We're also the same people that came up with a kilobyte being 1024 bytes -- a power of two.Don't you think it's natural we would move all our units to powers of two when the opportunity arose?
I think the actual reason was to avoid your heavy stamp taxes by confusing you with our units.
This would actually work - no trucker in England carries dollars.
I was thinking more of fire engines and buses. When they fitted chicanes to some of the streets in Aberdeen, they lasted about a month before complaints from residents, the bus company, and the fire brigade got them removed.
the police do use it for their funds, which creates problem 1.
problem 2 is caused by politicians thinking they can cut (or not increase so much) police funding, because they get extra money from fines. this makes problem 1 even worse.
Web Design
in effect, its the same as the money going straight to the government, every £1 collected in fines is £1 less they need to fund the police with. its all the same pot of money really, its just the police are too dumb to realise it.
Web Design
A set of tyres is relatively cheap, compared to the problem of extracting a wedged truck. I have actually seen this done, incidentally.
And if we could fine the GPS company every time a cop fines a truck and we'd see just how easy it is for them to update their software and how quick they can accomplish it.
All you need is two grade I or II listed buildings on either side of the road and it would be illegal to widen it. In villages you often get these, sometimes not wide enough for two cars to pass - which was completely adequate a few hundred years ago. You could bypass the whole village, but if there are other adequate roads anyway what's the point.
This BBC story from a few weeks ago typifies the situation http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/cornwall/7086989.stm
sell "discouraging" of routes so that rich people can pay money to re-direct lots of traffic away from their doorstep!
Bike helmets aren't compulsory in the UK for anyone.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
As a colonial, I find SI quite natural and compatible with a non-French outlook on the world. I have to think about people's height in feet, though, because this is what my English mother used to measure my self and my brothers.
I think it is just what you are used to, and I think that it's both obvious that SI is a worthwhile simplification of life as it is that it's easier to stay with what you know - because everything seems natural when you know it well. I think vim is natural and I am cack-handed with other text editors. The only difference is that there is a benefit from everyone using the same measurements whereas there is no need to use the same editor.
British people use French words and phrases, eat Indian food, benefit from the maths and science of which their contribution is only a part, got to supermarkets, eat hamburgers and do a thousand other things that they didn't invent and these are quite natural seeming in spite of having been utterly foreign and alien at one time. SI will be exactly the same and no-one will feel the less British (or American for that matter) about it. This is obvious because it has happened repeatedly.
This is all just my personal opinion.
They could install a larger version of these.
This video is most chortlesome...
When Bollards Attack:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_Cw0QJU8ro
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Ah, so you've been to Barrow Gurney.
This was a nice story several weeks ago..... /. is on the cutting edge of news again....
....
Barrow Gurney has no sidewalks, because it is not in America (it has pavements instead) it does not have a problem with Trucks it has a problem with Lorries
Americans, two weeks late and in a foreign language
Puteulanus fenestra mortis
Tele Atlas have a complete monopoly on GPS maps, why the $£%@ cant they be FORCED to put height and weight limits on their maps by the government, on pain of having their rights to sell removed.
Its not only me, I know a load of drivers who have e-mailed tomtom and the like over the last 7 years, asking for the ability to enter the fact that I am in a vehicle 40ft long and 16 foot high and 8 foot six wide on the screen and not be sent down 7 foot wide roads with 9 foot six high bridges.
We dont do it for fun. You try reversing it when you come to the restriction.
As for the arseholes who suggest fines:
(a) For most drivers the company pays, and a lot of the rest are based in east Europe, and would not pay anyway.
(b) No driver would go there if he knew how to avoid the problem. Its not about saving money or time, its about lack of info on the alternatives - how do we know the other road is better if its not shown as better?
Teleatlas could fix the problem but won't. regulation is needed.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
There's already a solution to the fire engine problem.
In theory, every £1 collected through fines = 1 less £ collected through taxes. There's absolutely nothing wrong with making rulebreakers pay the costs associated with their offenses (total damage cost + reasonable enforcement cost + reasonable deterrent cost), as opposed to the general taxpayers.
The problem is that this never happens. Whenever there is a budget surplus, it is never, ever, ever, translated to reduced taxes. Instead, the money is immediately started to get channeled through cover programs (Personal Development programs, Outreach programs, Social Networking programs), until it is sufficiently laundered, and inevitably ends up in the pockets of those politicians for their booze & party expenses which then they write off, as grandparent noted. Then, politicians claim the credit for "improved social standing" at their next election, all while the taxpayer still has to pay every single penny of the real expenses, and cheer for the politician while laying the blame squarely on the rank-and-file cops when wondering why they aren't doing their jobs well in any capacity except those of taking their money.
Indeed.
My commute home takes me over a bridge which is 1.8 metres wide. Last night the traffic was queueing back half a mile from the bridge. I cycled past the queue to find a bunch of polis trying to deal with a truck and trailer that were too wide for the bridge and too big to turn in the road.
I thought as I watched them, 'ah, another victory for Tom Tom!'
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
1. You are wrong. It is money. Removing a truck stuck between two listed cottages costs a lot of it.
2. I do not see what their problem is. UK authorities are experts in building road obstructions and making roads unusable for anything but a Daihatsu Ferosa or Suzuki Jimny (it has to be 4x4 to go well over the sleeping cops, tall so you can see the obstructions and narrow so you can squeeze between the poles). I live in Cambridge and we have anti-truck measures all over the place. Two metal poles with the distance between them barely enough to let a family car. I tried to drive through one of those with a Honda FRV and the only way through was to fold the mirrors (and I barely managed to get through). Nothing at all prevents the council in question from doing this. Nothing, except the fact that most people who live in places like this drive the biggest Chelsea tractors money can buy and there will be another outrage. The outrage of local citizens scraping their precious RangeRovers.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
Except that no law is being broken.
It isn't against the law to walk on the ceiling, or to eat broken glass. It isn't against the law to take a 2.4 metre wide truck down a 1.8 metre wide street. We don't have laws (in this country, anyway) to protect people from their own stupidity.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
One solution could be to petition the government to upgrade the highway through town or build a ring road.
Another, considerably less friendly option, is to install one helluva hairpin turn in the main road. Easy enough for a passenger vehicle to navigate at playground speed, but impossible for a transport truck.
Maybe the ideal solution is to install a toll booth system. If a vehicle exceeds a certain weight (or physical dimension), they'll need to pay at the initial toll booth. Then, install a series of toll booths along the route with a police radar of some fashion. If the vehicle exceeds the posted speed limit, they need to pay another toll in order to proceed to the next segment.
In short order, one of two things will happen. The traffic will find an alternate route around the town, or the town will have earned enough money to build their own ring road.
The reason you don't understand the problem is that you have no history, and you have too much space.
My house was old when the United States Constitution was first drafted. Am I going to tear it down to make way for trucks? No. My village also doesn't have physical space for a ring road, without some major engineering - a bloody great bridge over the sea on one side, a tunnel or a massive cutting through the hills on the other. The solution isn't demolishing half the villages of Europe to make way for trucks, it's to ban the trucks from places they can't go. And, ideally, ban trucks of this size all together.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
> One solution could be to petition the government to upgrade the highway through town or build a ring road.
You've obviously never been to an English village before. You cannot 'upgrade the highway' in a village which has grade 2 listed buildings which are 9 feet apart. These buildings were built 200-300 years before the invention of the car. They are important historical buildings and are hardly going to be demolished just to put in a bigger road.
It isn't against the law to take a 2.4 metre wide truck down a 1.8 metre wide street.
Do this deliberately and it would be criminal damage.
Do it thoughtlessly and it would be dangerous or reckless driving.
So yes, it is against the law.
'Barrow Gurney'... as in, "you'll have to take your [wheel]barrow out on a gurney because it's too small to fit down this road"?
Sorry, but as this is an English village it would never have sidewalks anyway. TFA should have said that the roads are too narrow for pavements.
Why doesn't the gene pool have a life guard?
I didn't think roads in the UK featured 'sidewalks', no matter the width, I thought we called them footpaths.
The put up physical barriers. At first I was rather confused when I saw these pillars and other barriers on different roads. And when I asked various people who live there, they often didn't know. But I guess it only takes one person to know to stop asking as I eventually got the answer. Roads that are too narrow in places for vehicles of larger sizes (those little 2/3s cars were usually okay everywhere) would likely cause problems if they were permitted.
No one reads road signs... well some people do, but the risk and frequency of that happening is too high.
The barrier method is both obvious and effective. The only reason it never occurred to me naturally is that we don't have those here in the US. The nearest thing similar in effect in my area are those pipe-grated things that are often found along country roads. Don't know what they are called, but they are used to keep live stock from walking out into the street. We also have various barrier devices similar to those of the Japanese, but they are used to protect buildings or obvious devices and structures, not block access to roads or weak bridges.
> Remember, the rule is if you can't see their mirrors
> they can't see you
I wonder why this is considered acceptable.
If Ford introduced a car with no rear view, and people
causing RTAs with that car just said ``well I didn't
see the car approaching from behind'', you can be certain
that there would immediate regulatory changes.
All lorries should be fitted with rear-view cameras, at
a minimum.
We don't have laws (in this country, anyway) to protect people from their own stupidity.
Care to check again? Just above people were commenting on how it's illegal to post imperial measurements without the equivalent metric as well.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo.
While I am the first to admit trucks do some stupid shit you four wheelers need to understand a few things.... 1.) It takes us a long damn time to get moving and almost as long to get stopped. 2.) Most of us get paid by the mile so unless we are moving we ain't making no money. 3.) 2/3rd's the length of our truck is a blind spot where WE CAN'T SEE YOU... With that said let me explain a few things. 1.) Late at night traffic lights are on a faster cycle than in the daytime. By the time we notice a light is yellow we usually do not have time to stop (safely) before it turns red. This is due to the 80,000 lb weight of our loaded trucks and we just can't stop that damn fast....period. If you four-wheelers would pay attention and watch to see if we are stopping before you pull out there wouldn't be a problem here....but if the light turns green, that means "go" and the hell with what might be happening around you. 2.) You four wheelers get in front of us, with no concept of how hard it is for us to slow down, and you just putt along, refusing to get out of the f'ing way. Then when we try to pass you stay right beside us (usually in the blind spot) and won't move, even if we have a turn signal on....well there comes a time when we just have to move on over. Our livelihood depends on rolling as many miles as possible in the 11 hours the DOT says we can drive and we need to be able to roll, not poke along behind some four wheeler with nothing better to do than PISS US OFF. 3.) There are signs on most trucks now that state "if you can't see my mirrors I can't see you". Well they should be changed to "if you can't see me in my mirrors, I can't see you". Just because you can see my mirrors doesn't mean I can see you. No matter how many mirrors you put on a 70' semi there is always a blind spot and you four wheelers will find it and ride in it all damn day long. Then call us un-professional when we don't see your dumb asses.
Not sure why you Americans have such funny little pints
so that they have half a chance in drinking competitions against
the Brits, big girl's blouses that they are.
Waddayamean drinking's not a competition -- you only say that when
you're losing.
Roll on the European driving license
Apparently part of the problem is that trucks from all over the EU go through these tiny towns and the drivers don't always have all that good a grasp of English. Perhaps a couple of steel posts set in the road far enough apart that only vehicles that can get through town can pass between them would get the message across. But that's probably too simple-minded to ever get done.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
Reduce, reuse, cycle
A year or so ago a truck took out a telephone box and a bench while trying to squeeze through my small Yorkshire town instead of taking the A-road just down the road. It wasn't hard to see it, there had been a path built across an old T-junction. His excuse? GPS said there was a road there.
I can see people on /. are already busy cursing lorry drivers in general - a sentiment I fully understand and agree with - but that is not the real problem here. Tele Atlas have not provided a system that is appropriate for its use; and their attitude is less than accomodating. If I sell an instruction manual for something and my instructions cause people to lose money, am I not responsible for that loss? I should think so; and Tele Atlas' instruction is causing loss of life.
One may argue that the lorry drivers should drive competently etc, but they would probably not have been in this place if they had used a proper paper map and had been forced to seek out their route before they left home, so I think the company are at least part responsible and should be made to pay as well as upgrade their data as a priority.
There once was a time when most trucks had TWO people in the cabin, the driver and the "bijrijder" (no idea what the english word his, but his job is to lend a hand). There also used to be "relaxed" schedules. Upon arrival the trucker would be directed to the kantine and be given real coffee and perhaps something to eat while his truck was loaded/unloaded.
Nowadays even trucks with frequent stops and for innercity work do NOT have a "bijrijder", an extra set of eyes, a person who can go out of the cabin and direct traffic, a person who keeps the driver awake and alert. The schedules are intense while the number of delays has only increased. Unless the loading/unloading is at a wharehouse the trucker now often has to help with the loading/unloading.
This all makes for drivers who are tired, overworked and in constant fear of their jobs being taken by whatever is the next low wage country where none of the rules apply.
All in pursuit of the almighty buck. Notice how especially trucks from companies like DHL and other delivery firms that are always pushing the limits drive incredibly unsafely. I know how the routine goes, deliver 100 packages and next day they give you 110. Deliver them, and you get 120. Traffic jam? Just work overtime, that is increasinly hard to get overtime PAY for. The odd thing is that if you look at maintenance records this practive is very bad as the trucks are pushed way too hard and this actually costs a lot of money. Plus the invevitable accidents really start to affect business.
But hey, the package has to be delivered NOW and for as little money as possible.
That is the reason many truckers are a danger on the road.
It is the same reason tech support (who are on orders to handle as many calls as possible) often just says "reboot/reinstall" and tries to hangup.
Want good service/behaviour? Stop squeezing the margins, introduce strict laws and make sure people ain't forced to push the limits just to make a living, because they won't always get it right and a rude tech support guy is bad enough but an asleep driver of a truck is another thing altogether.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Just to clarify things a little...
I've lived most of my life in the village next door to Barrow Gurney. It's barely a village, approximately 400 people... As for law enforcement, it's the local Women's Institute, frowning upon any anti-social behaviour and gossiping people to death.
I used to visit the abbattoir there regularly for fresh meat (braaaiinnns....) but since it shut down, there's no longer and point to visit. Should it disappear off the map, I'm not sure anyone else would mind (apparently including those who live there).
In regard to the actual situation in hand, I can confirm that it's a great shortcut for getting round the area "off-piste". The road section in the main part of Barrow Gurney is very, very wide and would fit several lorries in no problem. The only difficulty is that the rest of the village and all access to it is via narrow lanes (for you Americans read: tarmac'd footpaths) and can get a little hairy even in a car.
I'm sure there already is a suitable alternative route. The problem is that the satnav probably thinks you can do the dirt track at 60mph, whereas the bypass probably has a longer distance, and a speed limit of 50mph.
I was hoping for one of those horsedrawn ones, with those up-and-down pump handles and lots of brass. It would fit the 'Olde English Village' image too.
It's true I tell you, feller at work's next door neighbour read it in the paper.
There's a bridge near where I live (Southampton, UK) like that. It got hit 3 times in one year and because it goes across the road at an angle the lorries tend to roll over and get jammed under the bridge at about 45 degrees with one side up in the air. It's a big pain in the arse cos every time it happens they have to close the bridge to train going over it until it's been inspected to check the bridge is still structurally sound. They now have a big metal bar in place that they hit to prevent damaging the bridge but it still rolls them over. A photo before the steel barrier was added
My father knows one of the drivers who's hit it. Apparently he was making a delivery and he wasn't sure if there was enough room so he pulled over, checked, and edged very slowly under the bridge with about 4 inches of clearance. On his way back he'd already been under the bridge so he was certain there was room so he drove straight under. Only problem was he'd unloaded and the lorry had risen on its suspension due to the lost weight.
Having driven through the village yesterday I can say it's barely safe for cars let alone lorries - I don't think GPS removal will sort it though as lorry drivers know the roads really well anyway (they sort of have to).
I hope they start giving away black stickers to put over Barrow Gurney on road maps too - just because they can manipulate new technology doesn't mean the problem will go away overnight. Better signage would sort this - there are two busy roads either side of the place that are well linked but poorly signed.
Did you happen to read this in Reader's Digest?
molmod.com - computing tips from a molecular modeling
Something else I neglected to mention. I work for the Safety, Standard and Research section of the Highways Agency. Responsible for technology projects with regard to the major road network in England; part of the Department for Transport.
A project has been looked at and is undergoing further discussion (into whether it's DfT's, SatNav companies' or Haulage companies' responsibility) on a separate SatNav system specifically for haulage. I.e. a system that only uses roads with sufficient capacity for lorries. Should this come about it would solve this issue and many of other villages' issues.
I've driven through Barrow Gurney in a car and it's not a fun experience.
Here's the narrow bit:
http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&time=&date=&ttype=&q=barrow+gurney&ie=UTF8&ll=51.408354,-2.676316&spn=0.00054,0.001255&t=h&z=20&om=1
Unfortunately there isn't a better road between the A370 and A38.
Not so.
I live in a town that boasts the largest number of bridge collisions in England. Approximately one a month.
There are numerous signs. The bridge is painted bright yellow with black diagonal stripes. We even have an infrared transmitter on one side of the road and a receiver on the other to measure the heights of vehicles. High vehicles get flashed by a huge "Turn Back!" sign made of LEDs.
It's still funny watching trucks wedged underneath...
This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
"Why don't you let some air out of the tyres?"
This kid did not realize it was the top of the truck that was stuck, not the bottom!As for the arseholes who suggest fines:
(a) For most drivers the company pays, and a lot of the rest are based in east Europe, and would not pay anyway.
About 3 years ago I was fined for talking on a cell phone while driving in France. (Ignorance of the law is no excuse, yeah yeah.) Anyway, I'm a Canadian driving a German rental car, and was given the choice of either paying the fine in cash on the spot or having the car impounded.
So how does an east European trucker get away with not paying?
Well, trucks have large blind spots; I always assume that the trucker can't see me at all if I am anywhere along his passenger side, and is likely to not see me if I'm hanging around the rear driver side quarter of the cab. This means I don't linger on either side of a truck, and I avoid passing on the right (which you shouldn't do anyway) unless I have an "out" to my right and the truck is going really, really slow in the passing lane (which he oughtn't).
So I don't agree that truck drivers are particularly incautious as drivers, although there are some who are. But I do agree they would tend to ignore signs, because they are in a hurry. Faster runs means more money and more leisure for them. What you need is not signs, but enforcement. Look at each truck coming through as a chance to make a tidy sum in fines, pull them over without fail and take your time letting them go on their way.
Of course the deadliest vehicles on the road are rental trucks: heavy, unmaneuverable vehicles with poor driver visibility and an amateur behind the wheel. I remember the old "truck eating bridge" at MIT, in which Memorial Drive goes under Massachusetts Ave. Hardly a semester went by without that bridge shaving a few inches off some hapless renter's U-haul.
This suggests a way to keep trucks out. You set up traffic barriers to narrow the lanes so that a small truck can just pass through, if it slows down to a crawl -- say 2.6m or so. Then you put enough of these up so its a PITA for a truck to drive through your village. Unlike the case of bridge clearance, which is easy to miss, even amateur drivers are looking for ground level obstacles. If somebody needs a deliver from a larger truck, they get a permit and a road crew widens the barriers on the route.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
first they did what we said, now we do what they say. in a few hundred years the cycle will reset again.
Cos they can't handle their beer!
*j/k*
It could be, or it could be that the roads in question weren't built to handle the load truckers are putting on them and the authorities don't want to have to pay for the inevitable repairs. It also could be that this village is so small that it doesn't have a police force capable of the enforcement everyone else is suggesting.
You want to drink _more_ of that piss they call beer?
I'm a trucker, and I read /. while driving! As I am doing right now! How else could I keep myself awake for the long 14-hour trips? Next thing you will tell me I can't pick up any roadside hookers for a transit BJ either! Sheesh.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
The link to the curve is here;
http://maps.google.com/maps?ie=UTF8&ll=45.44282,-122.737069&spn=0.006925,0.013497&t=h&z=16&om=1
The truck bypass is the straighter single lane road in the inside of the curve for the Northbound traffic which merges with the 99W to I5 ramp.
The truth shall set you free!
For minor offenses for which they don't arrest on the spot, there's no powers of extradition so the summons is quite useless. They'll have to wait until they're caught again in the country, so in nearly all cases the paperwork is far too much so they just ignore it.
They are planning to change the system to the continental deposit method, but only for foreign nationals.
> this was before compulsory bicycle helmets
Bicycle helmets are still not compulsory in England. And nor should they be.
Then again as the story contains a sheriff it's obviously set in America (when England had active sheriffs there were no trucks !)
I'm surprised they can't post a 'No thru-traffic for trucks' sign though.
If it's so tiny and small, it's probably got a low speed limit, so why would it be passing through traffic for cars through it anyways?
OTOH, I think it's somewhat funny that I keep hearing about GPS driving fiascoes in Europe, not the USA.
I don't read AC A human right
At first I read the village name as Barney Gumble.
;-)
What a great theme for a village - maybe that is where I should spend my next vacation
There is, Barrow Gurney is right near where I grew up and my parents still live. I now drive through there everytime I go visit, and it has always been famous for being a place where trucks get stuck - even BEFORE GPS...
There is no reason to go through Barrow Gurney any more than taking the two huge main roads that it goes between. I think it's a disgrace that lorry drivers just seem incapable of reading signs but that's not going to change... ever.... so I guess we'll continue to see idiots careering down single-lane streets with 200 year old cottages on them, until the GPS people get their arses in gear and actually design something half decent.
I was in a minicab in london the other day who had a TomTom. He tried to drive down a cyclepath.....
Their request seems perfectly reasonable to me... Right up until I remember that there are -tons- of GPS units out there already that already have this town on the map. Not many of those will get updated maps, so it'll mostly be limited to new devices.
If this town wants to truly solve the problem, other methods will have to be used anyhow... Getting yourselves taken off the maps seems like a pointless move for this problem, and a bad move in terms of prosperity of the town.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Because if they had to drink *real* pints, then they'd have time to realise that the drink that had been served in them was slightly coloured water, rather then beer.
This is a BRITISH village we are talking about, ordinary cops in britan don't carry either guns or tasers.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
They are on motorcycles
They should have an overheight detector for it. Basically it's a sensor that determines if your vehicle is too tall for the obstruction and flashes lights if it is. (Obviously it needs to placed back before the prior turnoff so the driver has someplace to go when it happens.) This isn't new technology... I see them on low tunnels and the like.
there are only ~374 inhabitants: the traffic warden comes alternate tuesday mornings, the police come for an off duty drink.
I would think it would at the very least be driving without due care and attention.
Driving down a road which is unsuitable for your vehicle type ignoring signs that say so and then getting stuck doesn't just negatively affect you. It causes an obstruction to other traffic and quite likely damages whatever you get stuck between.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
I have cleaned my yard mostly of trees but I left couple of sturdy birches on both corners of my house which face the road next to me.
I have never had anyone crash onto my property, but I like the insurance anyway.
Well, uh, actually. Once someone didn't see an oncoming train in very nearby unattended crossing and the car, or parts of it, ended up on my law. Nothing would have helped at that point thou. The car could have come crashing down through the roof, to the bedroom.
Bot Assisted Blogging
Haha! Truckers don't look at Road Signs!
The article is about the UK. So, that's not "trucker", but "lorrer". Er, I mean, that might be "lorrier". Or "lorryer". Damn, now I wish I didn't sleep on English classes!
So say we all
No, it's not the car's fault. The truck driver must be aware of what's around him at all times. Yes, the car was in the blind spot and doing something dumb that made the truck driver's job harder, but it's still the truck driver's responsibility.
That's actually a really good idea - the satnavs do carry information about tolls, so it wouldn't even need to rely on signs. That said, it'd probably require an act of parliament to implement tolls like that.
Yes, but perhaps the best solution would be to plan the route before setting out. What excuses can there be for taking a shortcut through a small village? Should any trucks drive routes on minor roads through small villages?
Ne mæg werig mod wyrde wiðstondan, ne se hreo hyge helpe gefremman.
Just above people were commenting on how it's illegal to post imperial measurements without the equivalent metric as well.
That's just spin. Everything has to have a standardised weight, size, etc., which is metric - well understood and used by everyone under about 60. The law does not prevent you *also* using any other measurement you like.. imperial, libraries of congress, etc. - so in this case the law is merely prevent unscrupulous retailers weighing things in fubars instead of kilogrammes.
The same goes for money. Everything here is priced in pound sterling. There's nothing to prevent retailers *also* pricing in other currencies - some retailers also price in euros.. they could price in beanstalk seeds for all anyone cares - as long as they price in pounds as well.
It may be that in the USA, maps have more errors.
While it seems like this would cause MORE problems, I think in reality it causes drivers to have less confidence in their GPS systems than European drivers seem to have. European drivers assume their GPS systems can't have errors because errors are few and far between (and technically, this truck issue isn't even an error), while U.S. drivers assume their GPS system is going to do something wonky at any point in time.
Also, the nature of how roads are designed in the U.S. might happen to cause GPS systems to penalize small villages far more than in Europe. Bypasses and "commercial routes" are quite common in the U.S., in fact I've had great difficulty in forcing TomTom to go on state highways through medium sized towns instead of interstates through a major city to avoid traffic in aforementioned city.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Last month, a Slovakian truck driver arrived in Dover, bound for Wales with 22 tons of paper. But, directed off the highway and onto increasingly narrow roads by his navigation system, he ended up wedged on a tiny lane between two houses in Mereworth, a village in Kent, whereupon he had a panic attack, jumped out of his truck, and burst into tears. :D
It worked for Sheriff Roscoe PEEEEEEE Coltrane
If it's so tiny and small, it's probably got a low speed limit
Much of rural britain is under NSL, which is 60mph.. largely because there's no way to enforce a speed limit out in the middle of nowhere.
Techincally if the village has street lamps its limit is 30mph but that's often ignored because (a) it's a village with no police or speed cameras, and (b) 90% of drivers haven't read the highway code since they learned to drive and don't know/remember this fact. To counter (b) recently a lot of places have been getting large '30' signs installed.
"A pint is a pound in the US and exactly nowhere else."
This actually wouldn't be a very good menmonic either -- the fluid ounce (measuring volume) and the dry ounce (to measure weight) are not necessarily equal. For water, a pint is 16 ounces, and a fluid ounce is 29.57 milliliters (and thus weighs 29.57 grams). Each ounce of weight, however, is 28.5 grams, so for water, a pint is not a pound.
If you were measuring a liquid with a specific gravity of 29.57/28.5, I suppose you could get away with it. ^_^;
I think the saying only has value in that it helps people remember that there are 16 ounces in a pound and also 16 fluid ounces in a pint. Other than that, it just gets people confused. Two different units called by the same name? Give me metric any time.
Dick Cheney bought a cottage there.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
Oh, we have our share of fools on wheels in the general population as well, but Ohio (where I am) tends to be a pretty large truck shipping hub, so we get more than our fair share of the good, the bad, and the just plain stupid when it comes to truckers.
I blame a lot of the increase in problems here over the last decade or so to those "learn to be a trucker in 40 days" programs that have been popping up all over the place. Most of the people I've seen who go through those have absolutely no idea how to handle their rigs and are bloody dangerous.
Everything I need to know I learned by killing smart people and eating their brains.
Signs don't work.
There's a bridge near us that has a dozen signs and flashing height-triggered warnings over a distance of a mile on either side of it. There are numerous clear signs for alternate routes avoiding the bridge. Just looking at the bridge on the clear approach from either direction it's plain that there's no way a truck will fit under - clearance is just 10 feet. It has traffic lights because it is too narrow for more than a single lane of traffic - about 12 feet wide with footpath.
It gets hit on average once a week by a truck driver following his GPS, despite all that.
They have had to specially reinforce both sides of the bridge to be able to take the repeated impacts.
Plenty of issues here too: http://www.tailofthedragon.com/dragon_trucks.html on Route 129, "The dragon"
"NO TRUCKS OVER "
"2000 fine"
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
What you really need is a not a 'no trucks' sign, but rather a 'maximum height XX meters' sign, where XX is lower than a large truck, and higher than a say a minivan, complete with steel beam across the road just above that height. I expect that would stop just about every large truck.
Overcautious lawyer I think.
Round here the local council does exactly that - after about the 5th time a driver ended up in the living room of the house on the corner, they put steel barriers up.
Next time around the car stopped a little earlier. Scratched the paintwork on the barriers though.
The other problem is non-English speaking truck drivers, who don't understand "Unsuitable for heavy goods vehicles". Perhaps a picture of a lorry with a big red line through it would be a good idea.
Even if they do there's no guarantee they'll be able to read them. More than a few truckers in the UK have driven over from Europe and they're the ones most likely to be using sat nav. In some of the more persistent trouble spots local authorities have installed signs in Polish.
Can't say that I blame those folks for wanting to keep trucks off their streets. It appears that the GPS systems are simply choosing the shorter route and drivers are following blindly. You can probably hear and feel each vehicle in every village home as it roars through.
How about instituting a surcharge on every truck that passes through the village? Announce it with signs on the roads approaching the village. Set up cameras to photograph the trucks and their license tags. Trace the tags to the people who operate the trucks and bill them.
This approach assumes that the village can find the funds to pay for this. You'd likely need to stir up some publicity by chasing down and taking to court the firms that inevitably ignore the bills. No driver, or his or her boss, wants to save 5 miles at the cost of fines and potential litigation.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
That is Manchester city centre. There are *huge* illuminated 'no entry' signs before them, and there's no reason for a car to go through there anyway as it's a bus lane during business hours (disabled access to parking too but they have special passes).
Still lots of tards try it, and it's not that unusual to see one of the bollards bent out of shape by a high speed collision.
The other week I saw someone had tried to drive into the pedestrianised area on Market Street at high speed and bent the bollard at about 30 degrees.. they must have been going at one hell of a speed to do it.. if they'd managed it they'd have probably killed a crowd of people so it's damned lucky they only hit a bollard.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Planning your journey correctly before you leave used to be the only way to do it before GPS came about and still works perfectly well today. You can't go blaming the map or device makers for the fact that drivers don't want to take responsibility for their own driving and route selection if they can blame someone else.
~Pev
Unfortunately, they will be allowing all officers to carry electric stun guns in the very near future - not just trained firearms officers. And then it will used as a replacement for people skills as it is for some police officers in the USA.
This used to be a nice little short cut from Bristol to the airport.
Now everyone uses it. Damn them all!
Seriously though I witness trucks getting stuck at the entrance to my office car park on a weekly basis, all directed there by GPS. They really want the parallel lane 50 yards further on. I've similar tales from rural Wales and Devon where all but a small section of mountain/coastal road was suitable for HGV, but the GPS maps say it good all the way.
It's not possible to place signs on the Barrow Gurney road, as the road is fine for good traffic up until in enters the village, then there nowhere else to direct it, and fining truck is not the point either, by then it's too late and they're stuck.
The only real solution is a by-pass, but then this means somebody coughing up the cash, maybe the GPS manufactures?
If you'd read the linked article you'd see that they do have one, but some drivers just ignore them. Sometimes simplest is the best - have a gantry (which could also be used for signs & lights) at a good stopping distance before the bridge with a fringe of chains or a lightweight bar hanging down so that if a vehicle that's too tall goes under, it makes a fearsome clattering without doing serious damage. You never know, it might be enough to make the driver close his mobile phone...
It's true I tell you, feller at work's next door neighbour read it in the paper.
"Tele Atlas have a complete monopoly on GPS maps"
"Teleatlas could fix the problem but won't. regulation is needed."
Ahh socialism and big goverment mentality...
No, you need competition in your GPS map industry. Nothing motivates faster than the scent of money. Carrots work better than sticks.
And don't get me started on dog owners who use those ten-foot leashes and assume their mutts understand traffic
Actually, that would be a safe assumption to make. The mutts who don't understand traffic are not on leashes anymore...
Which means you were sitting in the area behind the cab. THEY CAN NOT SEE YOU. Sorry for shouting but I do not know how to make it more clear. If you can not see the driver they can not see you, it really is that simple. The mirrors 'help' but they can not see you at all. On the left of the truck they can kinda see you sometimes. But on the right forget it. I saw a sign on the back of a trailer once that summed it up, Left 'ok to pass' right 'death'. While you can see all the corners of your car they cant. There is this device in the middle of your stearing wheel called a HORN. It is to let them know you are there. Also do not drive RIGHT next to them.
Trust me on this most do not want to run you over. As running you over means they have to stop the truck and get fined and are not getting miles (by which they are paid). And a lot of times it means death to the driver in the smaller car. If you are passing them PASS do not hang around at the side of the truck.
You all have to understand about this Google Maps nonsense. It's for the greater good.
I found a copy of the original correspondence between the village and the TeleAtlas:
Find environmentally and socially responsible products on http://buy-right.net
I think it's somewhat funny that I keep hearing about gun crime and schools getting shot up in the USA, not Europe.
Peace is a human right; carrying a piece isn't.
If the parent poster were the ignorant American you picture him to be, he wouldn't have called it a 'ring road.'
In the UK even large villages may have a designated weight limit for vehicles to stop trucks from using the smaller village roads as a shortcut. This reduces traffic, noise, accidents and pollution in the villages and keeps the trucks on the main roads where they belong.
Deliveries into or out of the village are normally exempt so it is still possible to get a removal van or for shops to receive deliveries.
Truckers who ignore the signs can receive heavy fines, as can the companies who own the trucks.
Feh. You don't need steel. Just a little enthusiasm will do.
Even the clubs/batons/truncheons aren't really necessary.
All you need is a good pair of boots.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I agree. Many people blame truck drivers for a lot of things, while the real pirates are the assholes who do not dare to overhaul a truck and keep driving just behind it.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
GPS nav has already led unthinking people to their deaths.
For example, http://www.japantoday.com/jp/news/413038 Later reports, (can't find, sorry), said that the driver ignored/did not 'see' roadsigns EXPRESSLY FORBIDDING the route. They're now installing a height-restricting gate.
It seems that 'professional' drivers don't bother to prepare their routes using maps any more.
The better maps, and later on route planning websites - Michelin springs to mind, but there are others - have always allowed drivers to see hazards such and weight, height, width restrictions, or steep gradient, and thus plan to avoid them.
Even the better GPS software (iGo...) allows only limited constraints, such as 'don't use unmetalled roads'.
So, yet another example of new tech being treated as a replacement for proper competency instead of as an adjunct to it...
So the mnemonic would hold true, obviously. *forehead slap*
That's why you don't put up road signs. You construct a sturdy 9 or 10 foot high archway across the main road into town, and have a path (you don't call it a road) that local trucks can use to get into town. Alternately, put up a toll booth -- $50 for nonlocal truck passage through the town.
Here's a few VERY basic facts that most people seem to forget to just simply don't care about.
Here's a basic fact that most truckers seem to forget or simply don't care about: Stay the fuck out of the left lane on interstate highways! I have seen too many semis hold-up traffic because one semi (going 66 mph) wanted to pass another semi (going 65 mph). For extra credit points, don't pull into the left lane if there is a long hill ahead of you where you know you won't be able to maintain your speed.
For all of your "hardest working men (or women) in the country" talk, there are a lot of truck drivers who are real jag-offs. Semis are like slow moving trains. They should stay in the right lane and let the cars pass them (unless there is a road sign that specifically says that semis should use the left lane).
Well Tomtom sucks in the regards of user support, I never had an email answered. I personally will move to a different vendor once my old tomtom goes the way of the dodo.
Maybe so, but any GPS mapping system should know about the 30 limit and consider it in it's route optimization calculations.
If the speed limit is 30 in the area, but a route bypassing it is 60, it doesn't take much to make the longer but higher speed route faster.
I don't read AC A human right
It may be that in the USA, maps have more errors.
;)
Heh, the road I take to work every day isn't even on the map. I've looked. There's gravel roads on the map, but not the paved road that's been there for years.
If I was driving to new locations all the time I'd consider a GPS - but I know how to use a map just fine, and a $2.99 map* has all the functionality I need.
*Seriously, this is what I paid for my latest US road map book. It has a seperate map for each state, plus sections of Canada&Mexico.
I don't read AC A human right
He also wouldn't have a Curriculum Vitae.
I vote for pop up tank traps :-)
Just put up a sign saying "Toll Road for Trucks: XX $" and watch how truckers do a quick reverse and disappear forever.
Such a sign would be especially effective at discouraging British truck drivers who don't routinely keep American currency on hand.
Hell, they don't even look before they change lanes. I had one force me over a lane just the other day. They're crazy if they think truckers will just turn around and go another way if the road says "no trucks".
If you don't respect the trucks blind spots, then don't be surprised. Their blind spots are huge and because of this I give them wide berth or make sure I pass them quickly.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Or have a bar that rotates on top of a pole. After all, it's not often you get the chance to use the word quintain on /.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
That's got to be an urban legend. I would have to assume it's pretty common knowledge to let air out of the tires when stuck, because I know it was a couple of decades ago when it happened to a friend of mine and a produce delivery (box) truck.
I live on a street that as a clearly posted sign that says trucks may not drive down it after 10PM. However, it's the primary city street connecting central Cambridge, MA (USA) to downtown Somerville, MA. These two cities have a lot of trucking between them, and many truckers simply ignore the signs, knowing that police don't patrol the street.
I'd really like it if GPS maps were more up-to-date with this info so that they could select the right path for a truck, but frankly until they do, it's the truckers' fault (they should not simply rely on the GPS to think for them).
Hell, we just had a semi hit an overpass on I-25. If they can't navigate US Interstates safely, how the hell will they handle rural roads?
I drank what? -- Socrates
How about we just use # and we're golden ;)
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
England doesn't work that way. There's no significant history of implementing local laws, other than bylaws which cover little more than things like "don't walk on the grass". On the plus side, this means you don't end up with American levels of law variance from town to town.
The solution isn't demolishing half the villages of Europe to make way for trucks, it's to ban the trucks from places they can't go. And, ideally, ban trucks of this size all together.
sounds like the stereotypical British mentality I always poke fun at, but in this case it's true...
Just ban something, and it obviously will just go away!
Trucks carry the shit you buy, in case you forget. As much as we'd all love them to have their own little transportation system, it's not that way so we have to use the funding the plate tax/vehicle tax/multi-axle fuel tax/ bring to build these changes.
Yes, I know.. change is hard. Considering the age of your village, I'd say you should be used to change by now, and roll with the punches. After all, there's been plenty of changes in the 250+ years (wait, is there a british year system?) to learn from.
After all, who needs to go faster than 19-24 Kph, right? Why should a village that has been here far before the horseless carriage was thought of need to do such things as pave the roads or have petrol stations? If those horseless carriages want petrol or a place to drive, they can turn around and get it elsewhere!
Oh, and by the way, there were Quite a few villages in America that were old when the constitution was signed, also.
Remember Jamestown, Virginia? Founded 1607.
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
*lifts keyboard*
Oh, there's Compose... next to £...
:
So they will now be greeted with 'your village' maps and have to contend with crazy people on golf carts?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
While I agree with you that it's not the driver's fault if they plan their route with Teleatlas and Teleatlas gives them bad directions, I'm quite frankly shocked that you would so quickly reach for government intervention. As it is, a company willing to invest the money and develop good maps for truckers, stands to make a fortune if they can scoop Teleatlas (i.e. market forces can solve this problem). Regulation will just cement the de facto monopoly and make it harder for other companies to enter the market leaving you will inferior products that just barely meet the regulatory standard.
If all the British think like you do, no wonder the UK is becoming a surveillance-based nany/police state.
Oh, yeah. Signs. Like the ones I see around my area that say $320 fine for red light running. Seems to really help with those SUV driving moms that still enter the intersection when the light is red. Or the sign that says NO U TURN that I see people not pay attention to. Sad really.
"Tele Atlas says they will release truck-appropriate databases at some point, but until then they advise local governments to make use of a technology dating back to the Romans: road signs." If they were in the states, they'd get sued for stuff like this. They are knowingly giving out false information, and potentially cause harm to life and property. To be so flippant about it is like swimming in blood in the ocean thinking you won't attract any sharks.
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
--
Thank you very much for that. I can't remember the last time I laughed that hard, until I realized that site was not satire; then I cried a little. Still hilarious regardless. If I had mod points this would be +5 Funny, not -1 Flaimbait.
While this specific case was kind of an anomaly, truckers ignoring clearance signs have been happening here a lot, lately. Note the last line in the article: All bridges, overpasses and underpasses in the city have clearance signs.
The town council should look into Inverse Path's "Injecting RDS-TMC Traffic Information Signals". How many truckers would willingly drive through a village when their GPS alerts them that there is a bullfight or air raid in progress?
The reason you don't understand the problem is that you have no history, and you have too much space.
Take heart, as some of us yanks understand this all too well. There's an old saying:
In America, 100 years is a long time.
In England, 100 miles is a long way.
This same issue is plaguing The Tail Of The Dragon.
Compounded by the fact that it is a US Highway and, thus, can not be closed to truck traffic even though trucks can not in any way, shape or form pass through the road safely.
Insanity is the last line of defence for the master diplomat. But you have to lay the groundwork early.
This isn't Amsterdam... # is illegal in the UK.
That's common practice, mainly so that emergency vehicles can get in. Another way is to put the barriers on all access routes except one. Ok, so you still get truckers coming in on that one, but if you make the right road the access road you get rid of most of the problem, and if you build the barriers strong enough and it's hard enough to turn around then the truckers may still be there when the traffic warden turns up on Tuesday morning...
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
Since many nav units have databases of speed camera locations that can be updated online, installing a few cameras along the route might be the fastest way to accomplish this change.
Unfortunately, lorry drivers can't turn their vehicles round very easily.
If the road starts off at a decent size then gets smaller and smaller, by the time the lorry driver realises, they may not have any other option than to carry on, reverse 5 miles back along the road, or call out a crane to lift their lorry up and turn it around - which would you do?
There do need to be signs whilst the lorry driver can do something about it.
Also, I've seen devices which can detect high vehicles (a light beam across the road, set on poles) to flash up warnings to lorry drivers where there are notorious low bridges (there was one just outside Aylesbury when I lived there, on the A61 if I remember correctly). That sort of thing could be used here as well.
In jolly ole England we use international road signs, very few of which have any English language text on them so that non-English-speaking drivers can still use our roads. The maximum clearance signs have an iconic representation of the vertical clearance and a height marked on them (http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/TravelAndTransport/Highwaycode/Signsandmarkings/index.htm, under "Warning Signs"). They are not marked "Max Headroom", he was an animated character on 1980s TV.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
Look at http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/TravelAndTransport/Highwaycode/Signsandmarkings/index.htm under "Signs giving orders". It shows the standard international signs, as used throughout the UK, which prohibit vehicles above a certain height, length, width or weight, all without using a single word of English. If there is a plate with English on it, it will almost certainly be showing an exception to the prohibition.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
I guess the difference is all the craziest roads I've ever been on have specifically been logging roads, where trucks drive all the time.
Under the influence of Post-Cyberpunk Gonzo Journalism
I never see police stop cyclists for slaloming through pedestrians on the sidewalk
Come to London and you'll see it, particularly in Westminster. Except they're not sidewalks, of course.Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
We have logging roads too. They tend to be insane, rutted potholes that don't generally deserve the name and are not traversed by anyone other than logging trucks, loggers, and people using them to get back into the woods. It's often easier to walk them than drive them (I know. I've used more than a few for the last reason).
However, we have a lot of roads made for "normal" traffic that really aren't suited to semis and other large trucks for the reasons I mentioned. A lot of the roads in this state (especially in the older towns and cities) were originally made for horses and the layouts are frequently anything but grid-based (Ohio was a testing ground for different city planning methods. Go west of here, and most towns and cities tend to be laid out in a general grid).
Everything I need to know I learned by killing smart people and eating their brains.
As far as I can see, all the relevant roadsigns are the same in Poland as they are in the UK, except Poland uses a yellow background on prohibition signs whereas we use white.
Most UK warning and prohibition signs are purely iconic and use no language at all [1] except to provide additional information. It's the information signs that are being put up in Polish.
[1] Ok, to a semiologist, icons /are/ a language, but you know what I mean.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
Very interesting to hear... I had no idea these kinds of "neighborhood attributes" were flagged onto the roads in systems like this. It's dismaying (but perhaps not surprising) to hear they allowed rich neighborhoods to "opt out" of being thoroughfares, but not poor ones. I wonder who makes the call for each flag? When you think about it, that's quite a large amount of potential economic power secretively wielded by some GPS mapping company mid-level manager.
But what I really keep thinking is... how long before TeleAtlas and similar companies start taking payments to make certain routes or locations more desirable to the mapping algorithms? Any insight on this, as a former insider? I can see it now... "Largest Ball of Twine in Minnesota, here we come! According to the GPS, it's right on the way from Ft. Worth to Ft. Lauderdale!"
You shall see a cow on the roof of a cotton house.
Part of the problem is that the GPS devices give orders and drivers often don't have time to react and think about whether or not it is wise to follow those orders. There have been numerous cases where map errors caused people to get stuck in back alleys, or roads not yet completed, or too-narrow roads.
As a road safety issue we need to ban the sale and operation of any device, GPS or otherwise, that gives imperative orders to vehicle drivers. A GPS would be perfectly serviceable if it said things like "A road goes left 100 yards ahead" or "There is a road to the left 100 yards ahead". That draws the driver's attention to the maneuver without actually ordering it.
I believe that a lot of people drive in a semi-concious trance state and that these order giving devices could be subverted to cause accidents.
As a UK truck driver,
Funny how in this thread we have no less than half a dozen residents from this tiny 400 person shithole on slashdot, and several UK truck drivers to boot...
Nice trolling, folks. What's hilarious is how many moderators fell for it.
Please help metamoderate.
I don't know what the truckers are complaining about, all the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display in your local planning department in Alpha Centauri for fifty of your Earth years, so you've had plenty of time to lodge any formal complaint and it's too late to start making a fuss about it now'.
I HAVE CUBIC WISDOM THAT TRANSCENDS AND CONTRADICTS ONE DAY GODS
Man you have no idea. I used to live in a warehouse on the south side of chicag0 between two railroad tracks (lovely place. really.) I only lived there for maybe 6 months, and in that time 3 diesels slammed into one of the railroad bridges, even though it was clearly labeled and was obviously too low. This usually happened early in the morning, so maybe the Jolt Cola hadn't woken them up yet.
Eternity is a time bomb.
And if you knock down /all/ buildings that are in /somebody's/ way, there won't be any A or B left to go between -- problem solved!
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
When was the last time you purchased a one metre waist pair of jeans, or bought a half litre of beer? Not everything is standardised as metric now. Anyway, the GP's point still stands. When the metric system was forced on the populace by the government, more people understood weights in ounces, pounds and stones than did in grammes and kilogrammes. Shops weren't using those weights to try to con people, I'm not sure where you get that idea. If the customer wants something in pounds and ounces, and the retailer wants to sell in pounds and ounces, why on earth does the product also have to be labeled in kg (adding marginally to the cost) too? Another absurd thing is the 568ml cans, which cannot be sold as pints, and the 284ml bottles. Who wants to buy a 2.272 litre container of milk? I'd prefer the 4 pint one.
ps. For any confused Americans, our pints are bigger than your pints, so there ;)
At least they don't do something like this when they ignore them:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBGIQ7ZuuiU
I used to think like you, but I started a new job a couple of weeks ago as a multidrop driver. I have to go to addresses in a 200 mile squared or so area. I know the area ok, but not very well. Maps are useless for this kind of thing, since large scale maps will only get me to a city/town/village, and you can't possibly have decent street maps for that big an area.
It does, however, direct me on some interesting routes (which I'm learning to ignore). A couple of days ago, I got sent down a couple of miles of 8 foot wide single carriageway semi-surfaced road. Fortunately I'm only driving a 5 tonne van...
In California, SUV drivers are by far the worst. Changing lanes without looking, speeding, going too slow, applying makeup/reading newspaper, etc. I have actually had a few SUV drivers tell me since their vehicle is bigger it is my responsibility to get out of their way. H2 drivers deserve a slow painful death followed by an eternity of torture in the 9th circle of hell.
See www.fuh2.com
that sounds like a pretty clear solution to this town's problem, it would be cheap too. If we could vote on the solution though, mine would be to increase the power of the "light beams" so the truck is shaved down to an appropriate height so it can fit through the village. or simply replace the light beam with a nasty set of steel spikes that rake the top of whatever vehicle is too large for the roadway...
bonus: sell the scrap that falls off for cash
Authorities are investigating this incident, concentrating their search on a large trash can like object nearby.
Have gnu, will travel.
A Briton thinks 100 miles is a long way and an American thinks 100 years is a long time.
For security, the MD5 hash of this message and sig is 09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0.
IIRC a few busses have got themselves damaged by those bollards too by tailgating each other rather than following proper procedure.
I wonder if the ability to seriously damage vehicles was deliberate or just a side affect of overspecing the rise mechanism.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
I'm thinking 3 "no trucks" signs coupled with a nice solid bollard chicane to reinforce the point. If you want to get really fancy, put a 2nd set of bollards 50m up the road from the chicane so that if some idiot decides to ignore the sign and squeeze through the first set, they are either going to have to wreck their trucks or pay a #100 fine + #100 call-out fee to the fire dept to open the truck bypass.
In America, 100 years is a long time.
In England, 100 miles is a long way.
My wife lived in Germany for 12 years growing up when her dad was in the army, and she said a popular saying around the base was "Americans shower once a day and go grocery shopping once a week, while the Germans shower once a week and go grocery shopping once a day."
A photo I keep meaning to get is the long row of UPS assholes driving up the HOV lane on Granville at 70th every morning.
What did you think that key with the menu box on it was for?
http://www.debianadmin.com/special-characters-made-easier-in-ubuntu.html#more-272
I tried that. It doesn't seem to work. That stupid right-click menu comes up anyway. Currently have it set to right-alt.
Riding Motor Cycles
Sikhs who wear Turbans need not wear crash helmets when they ride Motor Cycles or Scooters. They have been allowed to wear Turban as their only headgear. In accordance with the Motor-Cycle Crash Helmets (Religious Exemption) Act 1976 passed by the British Parliament in 1976, Section 2A "exempts any follower of the Sikh religion while he is wearing a turban" from having to wear a crash helmet.
http://www.sikhiwiki.org/index.php?title=UK_Legislation_connected_with_turban
Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
And I blame the rise in that on the demise of vocational schools. It's apparently unacceptable for someone to want to become a truck driver any more, everyone has to become college educated and then become a manger somewhere, even if they don't do anything through college but drink and screw.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
Bullshit. The car driver needs to take responsibility for his own safety. Or do you think that it's the person driving on the highway's fault when they hit some moron who went running across 6 lanes to chase a lost ball cap?
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
Oh and when I read this story the first thing on my mind was the recently proposed theory, that people would happily drive onto a highway in the wrong direction, if that was what the GPS told them to do. I don't know if there is any evidence to support this theory. But actually I think in some cases using GPS navigation can actually also improve safety, you just have to keep using your brain. A GPS is no replacement for a brain. The city I live in has so many one way streets, that you have little chance of finding the right way without GPS navigation. And if you constantly are unsure where you have to go, and have to change your mind in the very last second over and over again, you are not likely to be driving as safely as possible. In that case using a GPS and looking at the signs would be a very good combination.
Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
You know the real irony here? I have a buddy who spent 3-4 years working towards an Associate degree part-time. The kicker? After a bunch of failed attempts at jobs (he got used as a 'temp' for regular workers on vacation in the field he was trying to break into at the time), and some personal problems, he ended up taking one of those Learn to truck drive in 40 days type things, and three jobs into it (over a span of maybe a year?) he's making more money than I would likely earn in 5 years assuming I had a BA in CompSci, or a similiar technical field. Owns his own house, and has more docked from his paycheck in taxes per month than he was MAKING at any of his previous jobs. And people are trying to tell us going to college will get you something above and beyond finding a field where the money is, and just jumping in?
:)
Kind of leaped offtopic there, but there reason there are so many more dumb truck drivers is because it's far and above a more lucrative business position than most of the other jobs after 4 years in college. I mean c'mon, you get the best of the army and management, you sit on your ass all day and see the world!
Sounds like you come under this clause:
If I was driving to new locations all the time I'd consider a GPS
I never said that the locations couldn't be close together. In addition, professional purposes like delivery can justify expensive electronics even if it only saves you an hour a week.
Then again, you sometimes have to wonder about cabbies - how the heck did they operate before GPS?
I don't read AC A human right
Wow. Lucky UK. Still, I guess we need to protect all of those SUV's from flying cyclist heads. "Won't someone please think of the SUV's??"
I'm not a driver, but I am currently going through some driving classes, so I am interested in such discussion points.
:-)
I [think I] agree with the general tone of your post - that drivers of smaller vehicles should put themselves in your shoes and try not to make your life complicated, because there are some natural limitations that make you and your vehicle less flexible.
Are there any rules that provide trucks a higher priority in certain cases (or offer you various 'discounts', making some constraints less strict)? If not - why is it the four wheeler's problem that you can't see them?
I always thought that traffic regulations should be "backwards compatible", the pedestrian being the most primitive level, followed by four wheelers, then trucks, then special vehicles, etc.
To put it in different words: as a pedestrian, I do *not* need to know the traffic rules (what the hell? I don't own a car, why must I know all the signs?!); as a four-wheeler driver, I'm not aware of what it feels like to be driving a truck - so I "have the right" not to know that it's difficult for you to stop/start the vehicle, or that 2/3 of your vehicle are a blind spot, etc. On the other hand, you're familiar with all the details, as a truck driver, and you can also place yourself in the shoes of the four wheeler driver, as well as in the shoes of the pedestrian. Therefore you are the only one who can be objective and make right decisions, and it is unreasonable for you to expect others to see things your way.
That's the rationale behind "backwards compatibility". However, I see that life is a bit unfair, and things are different in practice. As a pedestrian, I sometimes find it quite difficult to figure out when to cross a road at an intersection with several semaphores (unless there's one with "walk | don't walk" on it, which explicitly tells me what I should do). Instead I see several semaphores at different locations, and I have absolutely no idea which cars go first, which ones go second etc. So I am forced to study traffic regulations even though I am not a driver.
Having read your post, I became aware of a broad range of potential issues, so I guess now I'll have to be more careful when trucks are around - the odds of staying alive are now much lower
The saddest poem
Or maybe a steel bar limiting the height of vehicles entering the town?
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
There is a spot called Galston Gorge, which, for a car or motorcycle, is the fastest route from the Dural area through to Hornsby.
Trouble is, it's got a narrow bridge at the bottom, and about four (from memory) switchback hairpins up the East side that are challenging for most cars, and anything bigger than an SUV simply won't fit.
There are signs warning heavy vehicles not to enter, but if you approach from the west, while it winds a lot, there are no obvious obstacles for several km until you get to the bridge at the bottom. I've seen several trucks stuck at the bridge having approached from the West and ignored the signs.
I wouldn't like to have to reverse a semi all the way back up that hill. I'm pretty sure truck drivers only ever do it once and then never trust their GPS again, but it takes them and the Police a long time to untangle it all, and in the meantime, the road has to be closed.
If my call is important, why am I talking to a recording?
don't quote me, bro!
It isn't against the law to take a 2.4 metre wide truck down a 1.8 metre wide street.
It is if you don't own the objects on each side of the street. Since the truckers in question aren't from this small town, I find that idea very unlikely.
Given that you would also presumably be going very slowly, it should do much.
Even an inch should be enough.
I don't read AC A human right
Like warning of hot contain on a paper cup? oh wait ...
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Too obvious.
All 19 hijackers were known terrorists 09-10-2001. Lack of FBI intelligence does not justify warrantless wiretaps..
In the UK we have a fairly decent marking system for roads, and most GPS devices will use that information.
However one thing GPS can't allow for, is people parking on the road! I'm betting most of the problem is the fact the narrow road is made unpassable by parked cars, remove the cars and the trucks wouldn't have a problem.
However as you can't go around rebuilding every single village in the UK, then as some one already said, we need the government to step in and reclassify the roads.
----- I refuse to have an argument with an unarmed person
>Out here in Cali,
Which definition of Cali are you intending? Not the first or second, I presume. Just curious.
(transplanted Californian)
Three obviously :)
:) Maybe we're all just too old and Gen-Xy :)
Shoot, most people I know here refer to it as Cali
If the speed limit is 30 in the area, but a route bypassing it is 60, it doesn't take much to make the longer but higher speed route faster. The whole problem could be fixed quite easily by changing the map data to a speed limit of 5 mph. That would automatically keep anyone away who tries to go through a village as a shortcut; genuine visitors would be a bit surprised that the last mile of road supposedly takes 12 minutes, but they would still be led to the right place.
You are correct. I have never been to an English village before.
I have spent some time in Montreal and Quebec city, so I am aware that some roads are simply not wide enough for *any* motor vehicle traffic. There is always a solution to the problems that we encounter in life. Ignoring solutions, or simply not looking for solutions, will not make the problems go away.
Change can be uncomfortable. Change can be inconvenient. But change will come whether we choose to embrace it or not.
Just set up shop within a few hundred yards of the intersection with one of those ubiquitous Canadian high powered rifles with a nice scope. When you see some truck driver running the light shoot out one of his front tires. Repeat as necessary to allow the truck driver grapevine to work and you win.
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
That actually sounds like a very good solution. Whether it's 5mph or 1 mph, it just makes alternate routes sound better.
Still, even this might have issues - if the stop is on the far end of the village, it might try to direct traffic around the bypass to approach from the other side, even though it's faster(and authorized) to come in directly.
A setting to of 'only use this if a destination/origin is in the local area' would be better. Then again, maybe we can use something like routing protocols - use this path first that path second, the dial-up modem last.
So Interstate highways get a 5*, intrastates 6, 'main throughfares' a 7, minor throughfares a 8, residential streets a 9, and 'restricted duty' a 10.
A 5 gets a 10% or so advantage over a 6, and so on. So a restricted duty road would have to cut that segment of the trip by 60% in estimated time/distance in order to win over a major interstate highway.
Hmm... Another thought: bypasses get a 5% advantage - for a 20 minute drive, that'd only be a minute's difference, and would help keep traffic down inside the city(the whole purpose of bypasses).
Finally - especially for trucking, they need to start noting restrictions like width, height, and weight into the mapping systems. So when a trucker notes that he's driving a wide load that's 16' high that's 12k pounds per axle, the system goes through and finds an appropriate amount. Then again, driving such a load would require a chaser vehicle and permits here in the states(and a bloody good reason to be shipping it on the roads).
*I'd start it here to give room for upgrades, like 'catch the highspeed train 'ferry' for this crosscountry trip'.
I don't read AC A human right
You were probably driving in his blind spot or ignoring his turn signals blinking on your side.
I have seen this happen several times and the people who are the most clueless seem to be the ones who get the most pissed.
My British friend, the world is changing. There is precious little that you can do to prevent this fact. You stand there and claim that I have no history, you portray my recommendation as a threat to your history, yet you obviously have no knowledge of your own country's history. If so, you would likely not be casting aspersions about someone else making sweeping changes to the known world.
There is nothing that you can do to prevent the world from changing. Building and staffing a toll both that charges a premium rate for restricted passage is not unrealistic. It will likely, in fact, result in a decrease in traffic faster than any sign, law or edict.
They say that the definition of lunacy is doing the same thing repeatedly while expecting different results each time. I am the last person to want to see my Father's homeland destroyed for "progress", yet I am not so blind as to assume that hiding my head in the sand will yield a different result.
I know there is a fair bit of GPS info out there through various companies (in the US at least) that does give truckers the info they need for big trucks. A businessman/friend was asking me about dealing with some IT issues related to their systems, so the info does exist for some places. Britain is just behind the times I guess.
Well, it's normally OK if it's for your own personal use. So I've heard.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
The joke was about a kid on a bike, it wouldn't be funny if it wasn't obviously a child.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
By 'that' I'm referring to a policy that discourages some people from using a road with a bad toll policy. A nearby state charges DOUBLE the toll if you don't have one of their 'toll pass cards' Technically anyone can get one, but the only people that bother to obtain a pass are people that live there, so everyone who doesn't live their pays 100% MORE for to use the roads there.
A bit OT I know, but just wanted everyone to know that this suggested solution is basically already being done, just against non-residents instead of against truckers.
Those who can, do.
No, it's the person that ran across the road.
But in the first example, it's the truck's fault. You don't merge into another lane without knowing it's clear; the rules aren't different for truckers.
If I did it in my car with great visibility, I'd be responsible for the accident. If a trucker did it, he'd also be responsible for the accident. Same rules.
You're conflating two issues - base 10 and a regular, predictable (kilo, mega, giga, etc.) measurement system.
The SI now has a system in base 2 (the one with the funny names) and a base 12 system with regular intervals is the most useful for common math. It's OK, just like the ancient egyptians we can learn to count on our finger knuckles rather than digits.
Switching *back* to base 12 will probably be hard as switching over to a metric system.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)